Pretending to vote

WSJ illustrates how politicians vote for phony bills, in order to provide political cover for their ass.

At issue – Mitch McConnell’s bill to limit the EPA’s ability to cap carbon. Certain Democrats were in a trickbag for this- what do they do?. So, they vote for phony bill so they can later say, during their next election, that they voted against limiting Carbon, while not voting for McConnell’s bill.

Democrats weren’t taking any chances and offered no fewer than three alternatives. West Virginia’s Jay Rockefeller got 12 votes for his proposal to delay the EPA’s carbon rule for two years. Michigan Democrat Debbie Stabenow’s bill to exempt agriculture from the rule received seven votes, and Montana’s Max Baucus got all of seven votes for his bill that would codify the current EPA rule while also exempting agriculture.

Got it? See, they tried to block they EPA. They did.

Everyone knew all three would fail overwhelmingly because the GOP leadership and most liberal Democrats opposed them. But the amendments served their political purpose in allowing 13 Democrats to vote for one or another. The Senators will now claim that they, too, voted to rein in the EPA, even as they also whisper to the Sierra Club and other green lobbies that they voted to kill Mr. McConnell’s amendment. As Democrats expected, the media ignored all this and merely reported that the effort to limit the EPA had failed. Notice, too, how the green lobbies are keeping quiet lest any crowing embarrass the 13 Democrats.